White House Office of Science and Technology Orders Agencies to Develop Policies on Open Access to Science Collections

The federal government wants to make its physical scientific collections accessible through consistent policies that are used to manage those collections. A memorandum to that effect was issued yesterday by the Office of Science and Technology Policy Director John P. Holden. I’m quoting part of the directive:

a) Develop and clearly describe procedures for making scientific collections more accessible to educators and researchers, including non-Federal scientists, to maximize public benefit.

b) Work with the Smithsonian Institution to ensure that information on the contents of and how to access the agency’s scientific collections is available on the Internet in a central Federal clearinghouse and to maintain participation in the Federal clearinghouse once it is established.

c) Use machine-readable and open formats, data standards, and common-core and extensible metadata for all new information creation and collection to facilitate search and discoverability and provide clear public guidance for accessing collections materials, consistent with the Executive Order on Making Open and Machine Readable the New Default for Government Information.

d) When available and where not limited by law, make freely and easily accessible to the public all digital files in the highest available fidelity and resolution, including, but not limited to, photographs, videos, and digital 3D models, and associated records and documentation, describing or characterizing objects in government-managed scientific collections.

e) Associate digital files describing or characterizing scientific collections with the agency’s collections catalog and the central Federal clearinghouse referenced in Section 3(b) of this memorandum. By default, this information should be in machine-readable and open formats.

The complete memorandum is here. A press release from the OSTP describing the memorandum is here. – Mark

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